Thu, April 17, 2008 7:00 pm at Alwan for the Arts

Elia Dahar Abu Madi was born in the village of Al-Muhaydithah,Lebanon, in 1890. At the age of 11 he moved to Alexandria, Egyptwhere he worked with his uncle, a small businessman. In 1911, EliaAbu Madi published his first collection of poems, Tadhkar al-Madi.That same year he left Egypt for the United States, where he settledin Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1916 he moved to New York and began a careerin journalism. In New York Abu Madi met and worked with a number ofArab-American poets including Kahlil Gibran. He married the daughterof Najib Diyab, editor of the Arabic-language magazine Miratal-Gharb, and became the chief editor of that publication in 1918.His second poetry collection, Diwan Elia Abu Madi, was published inNew York in 1919; his third Al-Jadawil ("The Streams"), appeared in1927. His other works include Al-Khama'il (1940) and Tibr wa Turab(posthumous, 1960). In 1929 Abu Madi founded his own monthlyperiodical, Al-Sameer, in Brooklyn that after a few years started toappear five times a week. Al-Sameer, one of the longest-runningArabic newspapers in the United States, contained news and articleson the Arab community in America in addition to international news.Abu Madi wrote all the editorials. It ceased publication in 1957, theyear of Abu Madi' s death.

Elia Abu Madi was a prominent member of the The New York Pen League (Al-Rabita al-Qalamiyah, known more familiarly as Al-Mahjar). The Pen League was an Arab American literary movement of the 1920s and 30s that included such important authors as Ameen Rihani, Khalil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, Nudra Haddad, William Catzeflis, Wadi Bahout, some of whom have been more influential in the Arab world than in the US, as they wrote primarily in Arabic. But even among immigrants, they were important for proving that Arab American literature was not limited to writing about the immigrant experience or to explaining themselves to U.S. audiences. Publications include the literary journal Al-Fanun (The Arts), published by Naseeb Arida; Al-Sayeh (The Traveler), published by Abdal-Masih Haddad; and Al-Sameer (The Entertainer), published by Elia Abu Madi.

While Gibran is most familiar to U.S. readers, Ameen Rihani isconsidered by all the "father of Arab American literature." Othermembers of the League, among them Mikhail Naimy and Elia Abu Madi,did not attain their deserved recognition in the United States, eventhough Naimy was once nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature.Similarly, Elia Abu Madi was hardly translated even though he wasconsidered the most capable and sublime of the Al-Mahjar writers. Histopics spanned themes from love to war. Like other writers of hisgroup, he was strongly philosophical and political. While many oftheir articles addressed issues of American-ness, most often in apositive light, the works of these writers weighed on the side ofuniversality.

This event is part of New York City's Immigrant Heritage Week( http://www.nyc.gov/html/imm/html/home/home.shtml) and sponsored by the Arab American Family Support Center: http://www.aafscny.org/